Poe 1: Big-book-of-Poe.
Poe 2: Poe/Pym sequel-thon.
-ATMOM physical copy review. (and setup to this one)
Okay!! Gonna do this one in chunks.
Here's chunk one!
Arthur Machen short stories (see below)
The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories (2022)
The Real Ghostbusters (see below)
Arthur Machen:
The Great God Pan (1894)
The Novel Of The White Powder (1895)
The White People (1899)
So, these are public domain, so I read them free online. BUT! I liked what I saw, and ordered the physical copy of his collection, and Bullmoose just called, and they've got it!
So that's the cover.
We start with: The Great God Pan.
Had "Pan" spoiled by fuckin' Lovecraft in "Supernartural Horror In Literature". 😒🙄
Anyway! Here's the broad strokes without spoiling the end.
Misogynist mad scientists give a homeless girl a brain operation that "lifts the veil" and lets her see hyper-reality. She goes nuts, and is knocked up by a God. Not necessarily in that order.
Her daughter is...basically Scarlet Witch.
Hi-jinks ensue.
Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" took heavy inspiration from it, and outright mentions it.
I count it as a meta-sequel, like "Mountains Of Madness" to "Arthur Gordon Pym".
The God, Nodens, is mentioned, who Lovecraft directly absorbs into his mythology, so that helps canonize it even more.
"Pan" has a fan-sequel, "Helen's Story" that I plan on getting.
Mentioned it before here.
Next!! The Novel Of The White Powder!
This is actually a chunk out of "The Three Imposters" which is a "Creepshow" style anthology.
I read that it influenced Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" so I had to check it out.
Yeah, on a basic level, I can see it.
Non-spoiler plot: A guy becomes addicted to a pep-drug that's like a 19th century Gatorade.
It has shocking side-effects.
I can see both this and "Colour" ripped off in Stephen King's "Grey Matter".
King came at "The Colour Out of Space" three times!
"Grey Matter" "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" (AKA "Weeds") and "The Tommyknockers".
So, yeah, I'm glad I read this one.
Finally: The White People.
Non-spoiler plot: a couple guys shoot the shit about philosophy, then one of the shit-shooters shows the other a diary of a girl. Said girl goes on some magical adventures. ...it's horror, so that last bit is sarcastic. Come on. 😏
The imaginary language Aklo pops up first in this, then in Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Haunter Of The Dark".
If Aklo exists, they share the same world.
Or, they connect in the multiverse, which is a difference that makes no difference.
I had to back-track from the Lovecraft book, and read this one just because of the goddamned Aklo reference. Still deciding if it was worth it.
...yeah..I guess so. 🤷♂️ "Pan" is still the best one of his I've seen so far.
I'll give Machen this much; unlike Lovecraft, he keeps his creepy politics out of his stuff.
So far.
I might get to one that's like "Franco is awesome!! Kill commies!! Kill anarchists!! Kill!! Kill!! Kill!!".
I fucking hope not.
I think I would have gotten some kind of warning somewhere if that were the case.
Anyway! With just these three as the sample, his style reminds me of Peter Beagle when he gets darker.
"Sooz" especially really reminds me of "The White People".
If Beagle didn't read Machen, then there's some telepathy going on.
Now!! Those are effectively the Lovecraft prequels. Onto Lovecraft proper!!
The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories.
So, it's introduced and annotated by Leslie S. Klinger.
And he makes his excuses for Lovecraft's gross racism, mostly the "man of his time" chestnut; but overall, you can tell he blocks all that out, and he looooooves Lovecraft.
And Stephen King has made his career remaking, homage-ing, and Easter-egg-ing Lovecraft, and you can tell he looooooves Lovecraft.
I feel left out. I don't love Lovecraft.
Oh, I'm fascinated as Hell; this is an interesting journey I'm on.
Don't mistake me. I'm not hand-waving the guy with a "meh".
I said it before in my ATMOM review, the bastard can write.
He can rip a good yarn. He's a world-builder who puts Stan Lee to shame.
His monsters were a whole century ahead of their time.
Like Poe, if you're a sci-fi/horror geek, I think he's important to study.
But love? No, I can't summon it.
Maybe the shit going on in the world right now has me extra sensitive to fash-oid shit.
But this book is from 2022, and it hasn't dampened Klinger's enthusiasm.
I dunno how you get there.
I'm more excited to read and watch the stuff he influenced.
I'm glad I did this homework for that. Just as my Poe homework has paid off while reading Lovecraft.
I've gotta believe it'll all come together.
So!! That's Lovecraft the guy. Now this book!
Y'know, rather than break it down story by story, I'll give the lay of the land of his whole universe.
The universe is run by extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional monsters (posing as Gods of obscure cults) who either don't give a shit, or actively seek our obliteration.
Human beings of the Lovecraft-verse typically aren't ready for this revelation, and end up insane, possessed, or transformed.
However, there's a solid 01% of humans that gleefully want to help the alien-God-monsters.
The members of the aforementioned cults.
Revelations of the existence of these cults has the same effect on Lovecraft-verse-good-guys as exposure to the monsters themselves.
Lovecraft repeats this theme over and over, but dammit if the brilliant evil crazy sonofabitch doesn't find a way to keep it fresh.
For the individuals stories, I'll just rank 'em....
1.The Dunwich Horror
2.The Shadow Out of Time
3.The Music of Erich Zann
4.The Call of Cthulhu
5.The Haunter of the Dark
6.The Shadow over Innsmouth
7.The Colour Out of Space
8.The Rats in the Walls
9.The Outsider
10.Dagon
The top 3 are definite recommends.
4 & 5 are mythology must-haves, but I wouldn't exactly sing them from the rooftops.
6 gave me trouble. It's very well done, but HPL's creepy politics/racism creep in the worst.
Fitting to have it on the borderline between top 5 and bottom 5.
7-10 are historically interesting, and okay, but I wasn't dippy about 'em.
I didn't hate any of 'em.
Pretty decent selections by Klinger.
He admits "Mountains Of Madness" would have gone in if there was room.
Just as well, since I already have it.
So, from what influenced Lovecraft, to Lovecraft, to what Lovecraft influenced.
I needed something lighthearted after the doom bombardment.
The Real Ghostbusters.
You can see subtle Lovecraftian influences right from the first GB movie, but the animated show jumps right in to the mythos with both feet.
The Collect Call of Cathulhu (1987)
Covered it before here.
Re-watched it for this.
Plot: The GBs go to Arkham, and fight Cthulhu.
Why he's misspelled in the title, I can only guess.
Reading Lovecraft, and having the Klinger annotations really made me click in to the Lovecraft Easter eggs this is crammed with.
The RGB writers really did their homework. How could I do less?
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, this is canon.
And IMHO, connecting to anything Ghostbusters pulls in the whole Ghostbusters multiverse.
Fun fact: Patton Oswalt's character from "GB: Frozen Empire" is the head of an H.P. Lovecraft society.
The Hole in the Wall Gang (1987)
Didn't know until I was down the rabbit hole this one's Lovecraft connected too.
Re-watched it right when I found out.
It's not as blatant and open as "Collect Call".
More of a style parody.
The overall plot of "Hole" is kind of a loose mashup of "Rats" "Cthulhu" and "Dunwich".
And I guess "Dreams In The Witch House" too. It's not in the collection, but I've read a spoiler plot on it
I have it on public domain PDF to read later when I'm less fried on Lovecraft.
Plot being; the guys go to a spooky house; magical critters are leaking into our universe from every crack and mousehole.
Damaging the house makes bigger holes, and bigger monsters.
Things escalate. Hi-jinks ensue.
No HPL story is exactly like this, you totally have to mash some stuff together.
Anyway! The direct HPL references are...
-Takes place in Arkham
-Ray mentions he played against the Slugs, the football team of Miskatonic University.
Miskatonic University is to the good-guys of the Lovecraft-verse what the Baxter Building is to the Fantastic Four, or the firehouse is to the Ghostbusters.
If Lovecraft-verse had toys, Miskatonic would be the playset.
Russian About (1990)
It's not in my DVD set, so I had to watch it on Dailymotion.
I will never use Dailymotion again.
It blocks your adblocker, then when you allow ads, it geysers so many fucking ads at you, your computer almost fucking crashes. Not photo ads either, full fucking video.
And then there's the ads in the show. You're pelted with the other ads around the video as they're also injecting into the thing you're trying to see.
It's like the bad old days of poisoned websites of the 90's where you'd have to snap the power off to stop the crashing.
Fuck Dailymotion.
Anyway!! I actually got through half of the episode before the ad-attack became overwhelming.
Then I read a spoiler plot to fill in the rest.
It's shit. It's from the shark-jump final seasons of RGB when it was just about to die off.
The animation is sloppy and rushed. The writing is cringe.
Where "Collect Call" is an HPL love-letter, this is irreverent bordering on disrespect.
Which, given my political feelings, yeah, go for it; but they do it in a lame dad-jokey way.
If you're gonna disrespect HPL, blow a confetti-spraying party horn up his ass, and really get him!
Nope, they play it cutesy. 🙄
The plot? Old Ones cult in Russia, something, something,...who cares?
The only thing I did like; they go down into a subterranean temple made for giants like "Mountains Of Madness" and "Shadow Out of Time".
So, you get a little taste of that brought to visual life.
If you follow me down the HPL rabbit hole, give this one a pass.
I don't care how completist you are, it ain't worth it.
Stick to the first two.
And, that's that chunk!
Next: Lovecraft Country, and Destroyer Of Worlds!
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